A pound's duty is to protect the public from dogs and they should only take stray and dangerous dogs. No cats, no rodents. Cats and rodents are not a danger to the public. Any pound that takes them - especially feral cats - is doing pest control and free pet-shuffling.

Pounds should not take any surrendered dogs. It is not a pound's mandate to be a pet shuffling/disposal centre, free to the dumper, paid for by the taxpayer. Pounds must protect the public from dogs, or there would be roaming packs of dogs here as there are in many parts of the world. But pounds must combine that with the best dog welfare there is, because our society now wants that.

Animal welfare societies can take all surrendered animals, from insects to elephants, that is our mandate. We must not kill any but the irredeemably ill. At the same time we must also advocate for laws that make it harder for irresponsible people to produce, own and ruin animals.

The SPCA has combined both poundkeeping of stray and dangerous dogs with accepting surrendered pets (but only those species that are cheap to warehouse or kill, and for which there is a ready market - dogs, cats, rodents, and birds). It is this combination that has puzzled and fooled the public and the media for so long and has been so lucrative for the SPCA.

A pound that attempts to promote itself primarily as an animal welfare agency is doomed to get into hot water. Animal lovers are going to be angry because they don't understand that this "animal welfare society" must kill dogs. Combining the two, and then lying about the killing, is what corrupted the SPCA and made so many hundreds of thousands of people angry, disgusted and critical of it.

Protection of animals and protection of the public must be kept separate so that the public can see that there is an intractable problem that can't be solved with good intentions no matter how well-meaning an agency is. The intractable problem - dangerous dogs - can only be solved with breeding and owning controls.

For the SPCA to pretend to the public that they are able to combine dog control with the principles of animal welfare, is only guaranteeing that the problem is hidden and that no solutions are needed. AAS began saying this ten years ago, but legislators, the SPCA, and animal welfarists are still trying to combine dog control with animal welfare and the fraud is as great as ever.